How a boy from Haiti came to live a 'fairy tale' as Lowell football player

Paul L. Newby II | The Grand Rapids PressLowell High School defensive end Jon Destine, 17, visits his guardian, 70-year-old Joy Sargeant, at Meijer Heart Center, where she is being treated this playoff weekend.

Joy and Jon have been friends since Jon was 4. Jon was the barefoot Haitian kid.

“Joy was the interesting white lady,” Jon recalls.

Things have gotten more interesting.

Jon, 17, is a standout senior on the Lowell High School football team, an explosive powerhouse at defensive end.

Joy, 70, is in and out of the hospital, and endured open heart surgery in May.

The unlikely roommates have lived together seven years and have forged a friendship they both depend on.

“Me and Joy, we understand each other,” Jon says. “It’s hard to explain. We just do. We really get along.”

“I love him,” Joy says simply.

Jon Destine — pronounced “Destiny” — is a movie-star kind of name, which suits him lately. In last week’s playoff game against Muskegon, he hit the Big Red quarterback with less than a minute to play, jarring the ball loose, so his teammate Jake Stehley could scoop it up. That sealed the Division 2 regional championship for Lowell at a packed Bob Perry Field.

Jon’s real name is Jone, pronounced “Johnny.” But everybody was mispronouncing it as “Joan,” so he decided to go by Jon.

Joy Sergeant lived in Haiti for 12 years, from 1988 to 2000, lured by a friend who knew the former Caledonia teacher could do some good there.

She taught English to youngsters beneath a tree.

“I was gonna go for two months,” she says.

Then she fell in love with the people, their laughter, their work ethic.

“I loved it. I felt like I had been there before. I felt like it was home.”

She eventually returned to Lowell, and seven years ago, while at her cottage on the Muskegon River, Sargeant got a call from a pastor friend in Haiti. He wanted his sons — in sixth, seventh and ninth grades — to have an American education, he told her. Could she take them in?

She would.

When Sargeant went to meet their plane, she was surprised to see their mother had come, too, along with her two young daughters.

Sargeant put the whole family up for two years, she said, but ”things got tense with two women under the same roof,” and now Jon’s mom, Raymonde, lives across the river.

But the boys mostly stayed with “Miz Joy,” and Sargeant became Jon’s legal guardian.

“It’s like I have two homes,” Jon explained.

‘She teaches me so much’

Sargeant got the boys enrolled in school, watched them start to flourish.

Courtesy PhotoJoy Sargeant walks beside Jon Destine during a recent Pink Arrow football game in Lowell.

The oldest, Thomas, struggled and eventually left Michigan. Marc became a star football player and graduated from Lowell last year. He attends Northwood University.

Now, it’s just Jon and Joy.

“I can always talk to Joy,” Jon says. “She knows a lot. She teaches me so much. Little things about life. How to shop economically. Things about women.”

“I taught him about shopping and coupons,” Sargeant says. “You should see how much money he knows how to save. I taught them about credit cards and condoms. When you start when they’re young, they don’t get embarrassed.

“When he leaves to go out, I holler, ‘Be safe!’” she says. “And I mean in all areas.”

“She teaches me about the world,” Jon says.

The world has often challenged Sargeant.

She’s had seven kinds of cancer, from ovarian to breast.

Three years ago she slid off a slippery upholstered chintz chair and broke a leg and a hip.

“The last three years I’ve been in the hospital more than out,” she says. “But I don’t look in the rear view mirror of life.” She leans on her walker — which she calls her “Hummer” — in her Victorian era home in Lowell.

Her latest struggle was open heart surgery in May.

“I didn’t want the surgery,” she muses. “I was just gonna go ahead and croak in a couple months. Jone talked me into it. He said ‘Miz Joy, you’re going to have this surgery. For me, for my kids, for my grandchildren.’”

‘You have way more life to live’

“When she found out she had to have open heart surgery, Joy, she likes to know what’s going on,” Jon said. “So she read up on all the risks. She didn’t want to do it.

Courtesy PhotoJoy Sargeant with a young Jon Destine, center, and his brothers Marc Destine, left, and Bobby Destine.

“I said, ‘You can’t go through life without taking risks.’ I don’t know how, but I knew she was gonna make it through it,” he says. “I said, ‘You have way more life to live. You have more football games to see.’”

Not this week. Sargeant is back in the hospital, at the Meijer Heart Center, being treated for pneumonia and congestive heart failure, she says. Jon is taking care of things at home and visiting often.

“She helps me out and I help her out,” he says. “I take out the trash, mow the lawn, carry the groceries, clean out the garage — whatever she needs. It’s always a two-way street.”

In February he learned he needed shoulder surgery.

“She said ‘Ha — the tables are turned. Now you’re in the hospital and I’m helping you.’ She brought me cherry slushies. I got addicted to them.”

‘They’re even better men’

Jon has endeared himself to the community, says his football coach, Noel Dean.

“He’s a hard working, humble person,” Dean says. “You wouldn’t know much about what he has going on.”

“You can tell they came from humble beginnings,” he says. “In today’s world, there’s a sense of entitlement with some kids. There’s zero sense of entitlement with them. They’re just happy to be part of something.

“That’s why they’re so respected. You can’t help but like and respect a kid like that.”

Sargeant, he says, “was the bridge to keep them here. This is a nice town. Jon, Joy, Marc all add to it.”

“The best time of my life was in Haiti,” says Sargeant, who regularly sends hundreds of hand-knit hats to Haiti for babies there, a program she calls Hats for Haiti. She smiles. “And, having these kids.

“They have good heads on their shoulders,” she says of the brothers. “They’re Christian. They have goals. They’re going to be somebody.”

‘The opportunities are endless’

Meanwhile, Jon still feels the glow from when he was voted Homecoming King this fall.

“I had the biggest smile on my face,” he says. “America is the land of opportunity. If you work hard...” his voice trails off.

“It’s by the grace of God that I’m here, getting an education,” he says. “In Haiti, there’s a lot of fending for yourself. Here, I’m involved in sports, Joy knows so much — the opportunities are endless.” He plans to go to college, hopefully with help from a football scholarship. He’s considering a career in marketing.

“He could sell an ice cube to an Eskimo,” Sargeant notes proudly.

“I feel like the luckiest kid in the world,” Jon says. “Look at where I come from. It seems like I’m riding on a cloud. Like a fairy tale.”